


and let the words fall out

by minuanos



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: AU: Patron Saint of Lost Causes, Alternate Universe, Coming Out, Emily Prentiss is a lesbian, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-23
Updated: 2020-07-23
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25464079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minuanos/pseuds/minuanos
Summary: “I don’t want to go out with your friend,” she says, voice as flat as she can make it. “If he’s anything like the average guy in my French class, he barely knows where France is. Idiots aren’t my type.”“So what is your type, then?” Derek asks, and she clenches her fists in the grass until the blades give way, dirt gritty and damp under her nails, becausegod,isn’t that the million-dollar-question.
Relationships: Emily Prentiss & The BAU Team
Comments: 21
Kudos: 158





	and let the words fall out

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Patron Saint of Lost Causes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24442195) by [themetaphorgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/themetaphorgirl/pseuds/themetaphorgirl). 



> This fic has a slightly odd origin story in that I wrote a short thing on tumblr about themetaphorgirl's excellent 'Patron Saint of Lost Causes' boarding school AU, and then an anon asked me to write another thing in that AU about Emily coming out, and then I got a bit carried away, but here we are. At the time of writing, the main fic is only eight chapters long and I have absolutely no idea what Caitlin's plans are, so your best bet is probably to consider this an AU of an AU and to read everything she's ever written. 
> 
> Title is from 'Brave' by Sara Bareilles.

It’s Sunday, quiet and bright; the younger kids are working on the same last-minute assignment, Alex is visiting her parents for the weekend, and nobody’s seen Hotch since breakfast, which probably means he’s got something to do. Emily has stuff too, a test coming up next week and an essay she hasn’t started, but the weather’s nice and lying out in the grass with her headphones in seems like a much better option, somehow.

She picks a spot and an album, and settles down until she’s interrupted by something poking her shoulder and a voice that sounds suspiciously like Derek Morgan with a death wish saying, “Emily. Emily. Emily.”

 _“What_?” she says eventually, yanking out her earbuds and squinting into the sun.

“Saw a puddle of darkness while I was running and figured there’s only one person I know who’d wear that much black in this weather,” Derek says, and chuckles when she rolls her eyes. “Good to see you’re not dead in a ditch, Prentiss.”

“What, were you worried?” Emily asks, pushing herself up onto her elbows.

Derek shrugs. “Nah, just curious. What happened, Alex kick you out of the library again?”

“She’s visiting home this weekend,” Emily tells him. “And that was one time, and it wasn’t my fault, it was—”

“Yeah, yeah, Anderson’s fault, I know. What about the others?”

“The kids have work to do. No idea about Hotch. Why?”

“No reason,” Derek says. “I don’t think I ever see you hanging about with anyone else, though. Don’t you get lonely?”

“You hang out with them too, you know they have stuff on sometimes,” Emily says. “Are you going to sit down or just keep blocking the light?”

“I have other friends,” Derek says, flopping down onto the grass beside her. “The guys from the football team, and from class, and back home too. Do you even know anyone else in your grade?”

“Hotch is in my grade,” Emily says, before realising it doesn’t really strengthen her point. “And I know the names of like, people in class, and Elle made us all do a bonding evening with the rest of our floor at the start of the year. Craft activities, board games, exchanging Instagrams, that sort of thing. Alex hated it and let us leave early.”

“Right,” Derek says, drawing out the vowel until Emily stretches out to poke him with her foot.

“I don’t care,” she tells him. “I like the friends I’ve got, even you.”

“Right,” Derek says again, and Emily gets suspicious.

“Did Hotch put you up to this?” she demands. “Because if anyone needs to work on their social life, it’s that guy. I’m _this_ far away from signing him up to the nearest single parents’ support group so he can bond with others in a similar situation.”

“Hotch didn’t put me up to anything,” Derek says, hands raised in surrender. “I’m just asking because Brad was asking me about you.”

“Brad?”

“Yeah, you know, Brad from the football team? He says you’re in the same French class- taller than me, white dude, dark hair, probably thinks he’s smoother than he actually is.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t describe half of that class at all,” Emily deadpans back at him. “I swear to god, you teach a teenage boy to conjugate one verb and suddenly he thinks he’s a motherfucking Casanova. What does he want?”

“He wants to know if you’re single.”

Emily can feel her breath freeze in her throat, a chill running through to the pit of her stomach. The sun feels too bright, light and shadow blurring together until she feels translucent, heart thumping against her ribs for everyone to see. “What did you tell him?” she asks, digging her fingertips into the soft ground around her.

“I told him I’d ask,” Derek says, and leans back on his elbows, clearly waiting for an answer. When it isn’t forthcoming, he sits up again. “C’mon, Prentiss. He’s not like most of the guys on the team— he’s aiming for a sports scholarship somewhere good, and I’m pretty sure he’s not one of the ones giving Spencer shit—”

“Wow,” she says, slow and saccharine as honey. “Such a high bar to clear.”

“Okay, yeah, but you know what I mean. I think you should give him a chance.”

It’s her move. Emily tries not to blink. “How do you know it’s not a joke?” she tries. “I don’t really feel like being humiliated, thanks.”

Derek’s expression flickers, a little hurt. “I wouldn’t do that to you,” he says. “Neither would anyone else. You’re scary when you’re mad.”

 _“Scary_?” Emily demands, the tension in her stomach briefly reshaping itself into a sense of surprise that falls away before she can be offended. “Yeah, okay, I’ll take that. You can tell Chad—”

“Brad.”

“—to fuck off, though.”

Derek just laughs. “Emily, come on. How bad could it be?”

 _Oh, you have no idea_ , Emily thinks, because nobody here does. Nobody knows any of it, and she wasn’t planning on changing that, because she understands secrets: the way they twist up sharply inside her until it feels like they’ll cut their own way out, how if she lets one thing loose there’s nothing stopping the rest falling and scattering like she’s shaking the dust out of her own personal Pandora’s Box. She has a good thing going here: despite herself, she likes the sunny days in the grass and coffees in the library, the movie nights and quiet weekend breakfasts with a seat saved for her, and she doesn’t want to screw it up. Here, she’s starting to let herself linger. She lends JJ her spare flannel shirt when she’s cold after practice and doesn’t ask for it back, lets Hotch and Derek and Spencer use the passwords to her various streaming subscriptions until the recommended sections defy any algorithm, finds herself dropping bits of Dave’s weird Milanese slang into conversation as if she’s been using it all her life. She and Alex know each other’s routines as well as their owns, know how to move together in sleepy synchronicity; Penelope offers to reattach the sloppily-sewn patches as they fall off her favourite jacket; James knows her coffee orders by heart, can tell by the weather which one she’ll want. People here are starting to know her, enough to make St. Thaddeus different to just about anywhere else she’s ever spent enough time for it to count, but they don’t know _about_ her, and the thought of changing that makes something flare and tighten around her ribcage.

“Emily?” Derek says again. She tilts her head up towards a sky clear and bright as an overexposed photograph, and shuts her eyes tight.

“I don’t want to go out with your friend,” she says, voice as flat as she can make it. “If he’s anything like the average guy in my French class, he barely knows where France is. Idiots aren’t my type.”

“So what is your type, then?” Derek asks, and she clenches her fists in the grass until the blades give way, dirt gritty and damp under her nails, because _god_ , isn’t that the million-dollar-question.

She opens her mouth to answer and it’s like all the breath vanishes from her lungs, the air around her still and warm as a locked room. There’s no wind, just birdsong and the tinny sound of music still playing through her abandoned headphones and the ground crumbling beneath her fingers. When she opens her eyes again, and Derek is staring at her, head tilted to one side in a gaze she recognises from the rare times Hotch actually snaps at someone, from when Penelope needs a hug or Spencer falls asleep at the dinner table. It’s the look that always reminds her that Derek Morgan isn’t just one of the football guys, isn’t just a Lincoln kid, that he’s a better friend that the people who don’t know him give him credit for.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, but there’s no bite in her tone. “I’m not going to tell you.”

“C’mon, Prentiss,” he says. “I’ll bet you have standards, so it can’t be that bad. Promise I won’t laugh.”

A clump of birds detach themselves from a nearby tree, harsh cries stirring the air, and a flurry of moments from last week’s movie night arrive unprompted in her mind— _Hamilton_ , again, JJ and Penelope dragging her up to fill in for their ‘Schuyler Sisters’ lipsync because Spencer fell asleep on Alex two minutes in and she didn’t want to wake him, Derek joining them as Burr, Dave and James taking it in turns to throw M&Ms into her mouth to distract them from crying through the second act, Hotch’s dark eyes watching them all instead of the screen. The gradual drifting to bed afterwards, hunting for her phone charger and listening to Alex half-humming, half-singing in the bathroom, _never had a group of friends before, promise that I’ll make you all proud_.

There’s a handful of grass in her fist, loose earth smeared across her palms; she stands up a little too fast, blinks and waits for her vision to clear. “Let’s go see if the munchkins are done yet,” she says, brushing the dirt off her hands as she walks. “It’s gotta be nearly lunchtime, Hotch’ll kill me if they miss it.”

“Lunch isn’t for at least another hour,” Derek says, because he’s more accurate than most clocks when it comes to mealtimes, but he follows her anyway, hands shoved in the pockets of his shorts.

It’s not far back to the school, but they don’t speak; Derek whistles occasionally, but she just keeps walking, tries to swallow down the lump in her throat. By the time they’re on the threshold of Lincoln House, it feels like there’s something heavy lodged between her collarbones, the holding point for a tension that stretches through her entire body. She flexes her fingers, pushes her hair out of her face, clears her throat like she’s in debate club.

“Derek?”

He’s two steps ahead of her, but he stops immediately, turns and looks at her, and she meets his gaze. “Yeah?”

She could say anything, say the kids are in the library or she left something in Roosevelt or something even less convincing, and it would be fine. She could say anything, because her friends are good at forgiving the little weirdnesses and banding together to help the big ones, their group a safety net that bounces back to contain anything thrown into it. She could say anything, and she wonders how bad it could be, tries to guess the weight of one more secret.

Derek waits. Emily takes a breath.

“You stink,” she says. “Go take a shower, I’ll find the kids,” and watches him laugh as he goes, taking the steps two at a time.

—

It’s not a beginning, not quite, but it’s something, a quicksilver thought that gleams and twists until she can’t ignore it anymore. She keeps reminding herself that she doesn’t _need_ to tell anyone, but the idea of it lingers in her mind, and she lets it, lies in bed when she can’t sleep with the words running through her mind over and over.

“Hey,” she says eventually, when Alex and James are in the library one afternoon under the pretence of studying and she and Dave are mostly just there to bug them. “If I, like, wasn’t straight, would that be a problem?”

Her voice is stiff with forced casualness, and she can tell that they pick up on it, but she keeps fiddling with the keychain on her bag anyway, not wanting to see their faces.

“Course not,” James says after a moment. “Why would it be?”

She shrugs, looks up to see his kind eyes meet hers across the table. “Some people mind,” she says.

“Prentiss, I have more problems with you being a godforsaken vegetarian than I do with your sexuality, whatever it may be,” Dave drawls, and the absurdity of it makes all the tension clustered in her chest dissipate in a sharp burst of laughter.

“I’m not a vegetarian,” she says.

“Well then, no problem here,” Dave says. She rolls her eyes; he rolls his right back. Alex is watching them, pen balanced between her fingers and a slight frown on her face.

“Has anyone been giving you trouble?” she asks.

“Not here,” Emily says. “Nobody knows. I don’t— I don’t tell people.”

“Okay, then,” Alex says, face loosening into a smile, reaching out to tap gently at where Emily’s hand is still clenched tightly around her keys, hard metal digging into her palm. “Thanks for letting us know.”

Emily breathes out. “Also,” she says, “this essay’s bullshit so far, who wants coffee?” and when she gets outside it’s blowing what feels like the beginning of a storm, cold and sharp through the rips in her jeans, and she turns and laughs into the wind.

—

It takes her a while to catch Hotch on his own, but one afternoon she walks into Honeybean after classes and immediately hears familiar voices arguing. “I don’t care if you didn’t have one yesterday, Spencer, if you have another coffee now, you’ll be bouncing off the walls all afternoon and crash before dinner,” Hotch is warning as she comes up behind them. “Hi, Emily.”

“Can I have a word?”

Spencer takes advantage of the sudden distraction to yelp “I’ll get you a cookie!” and scampers off, head and shoulders below the rest of the crowd; Hotch just sighs and waves at Emily in a _go ahead_ motion.

“Okay,” Emily says. “This concerns emotions, sort of, so don’t freak out.”

Hotch immediately looks like he’s biting down on a lemon, but he nods, shifting in his seat like he’s bracing himself.

“I just wanted to tell you something,” Emily says, and for some reason she’d thought Hotch would be the easiest out of all of them, because he has the emotional capacity of a plank of wood and all of that seems to be directly channelled into loving his friends, but the words have completely gone out of her head, ears filling with the gentle buzz of conversation around them.

“Emily?” Hotch says, and _shit,_ now he looks worried, glancing between her and Spencer ordering his drink on tiptoes like she’s just boosted herself past the literal ten-year-old in the babysitting stakes.

“I like—” she says, and her voice trembles, god-fucking-dammit, so she swallows and tries again. “I mean, I want you to know, I— _fuck_.” She shakes her head, tries to force back the stinging in her eyes through sheer will. “Give me a second.”

Hotch doesn’t even try to call her out on the language— he looks like he’s trying to swallow the lemon from earlier, and the expression would be hilarious if it wasn’t directed at her. “Er,” he says. “Emily. I’m, um, flattered, I guess, but I don’t— I don’t see you that way.”

Emily stares at him. “What the fuck?” she asks. “You don’t exactly have a choice here, Hotch.”

“I— what are you talking about?”

“What are _you_ talking about?”

They stare at each other for a moment, all her anxiety melting into utter bewilderment while Hotch’s face steadily flushes bright red, and suddenly the penny drops.

“Jesus Christ on a bike, Hotchner, I’m not trying to ask you out, I’m trying to _come out_ ,” Emily says. “I’m a motherfucking _lesbian_ , that’s what I’m trying to say.”

“Oh, thank god,” Hotch says fervently, and suddenly they’re both laughing; it’s the most animated Emily’s seen Hotch in a while, her own dizzying relief mirrored in his face, although he manages to regain his composure while she’s still gasping for breath, actual tears in her eyes.

“Are you guys okay?” Spencer chirps from behind them, little hands wrapped tightly around the _Star Wars_ takeaway cup Penelope got him for his birthday. “Should I be concerned?”

“Hotch just turned me down,” Emily says, dabbing at her eyeliner. “I’m heartbroken.”

“No, you’re not,” Hotch says, not quite managing to keep a straight face. “Ignore her, Spencer.”

Spencer just blinks at them, and Emily thinks _what the hell_ , drags her bag off the seat so there’s room for him to sit down and says “Hey, kiddo, you’re familiar with the idea of like, non-heterosexuality, right?”

“Historical or contemporary?” Spencer asks.

“Either. Both. I like girls.”

Spencer nods, says “Okay, but,” and starts talking about early modern theatre. Emily exchanges a look with Hotch and pulls the kid into a one-armed hug, ruffles his hair until he protests and squirms away.

“Never change, _passerotto_ ,” she tells him.

—

It doesn’t exactly get easier, but she gets used to to it, to the cresting-wave tension and release of it every time. She still runs the words over in her mind before she sleeps, but now it’s like she’s trying them on for size, liking how they fit. She’s stopped worrying about the weight of secrets, or at least this one, because it seems to get lighter the more she shares it.

“I love your outfit!” Penelope says one day, bouncing up to her on the way to debate club. “Very, uh, punk-lesbian-battle-goddess. I love that.”

Emily shrugs— she certainly hadn’t had anything that specific in mind when she’d changed out of her uniform after classes, but she’s used to Penelope by now, and she thinks she knows what she means. “Thanks, that’s what I was going for,” she says, and Penelope’s eyes widen like saucers even as she raises a hand for a high-five.

“Nice,” she says. “Oh, that’s _so_ smooth, oh my god-“

—

JJ is possibly the easiest, actually; they’re on the sort of group trip into town where half of them disappear into the bookshop while the others take requests for a Target run, and in the meantime Emily gets ice-cream and JJ gets toppings with some ice-cream under it. They find a spot on a bench near a fountain and at some point Emily just says, “Do you know I’m gay?”

“Uh-huh,” JJ responds, slightly preoccupied by the gradual collapse of her sugar mountain.

Emily frowns. “Did I… tell you that?” she asks, trying to remember.

“Nope,” JJ says. “I just sort of figured. Do you have a tissue? This stuff’s sticky.”

“Huh,” Emily says, and passes her the stack of napkins she’d picked up as they left the ice-cream place ( _god_ , she’s turning into Alex).

—

Derek is the last one she tells, and by then she can hardly remember why it’s taken her so long. “Hate to do it to you, Prentiss,” he says, coming up behind her after chapel one day, “but Brad is still pining away—”

“Absolutely not,” she says without looking up from her phone, and hears Derek laugh, because by this point it’s just another of the running jokes that everyone who befriends Derek Morgan seems to get drawn into.

“Jeez, he’s really not your type, huh?”

“ _Guys_ aren’t really my type,” she says, pauses long enough to watch his face shift, eyebrows rising. “At all.”

“Oh, shit,” Derek says, and her heart jumps into her throat before he continues, “why didn’t you say something earlier, I can probably get you in with the lacrosse team—” and slings an arm over her shoulders as they walk, a grounding weight in the wave of dark blazers streaming out of the chapel into the sunlit afternoon.

Emily breathes out, and in again— the lightness stays. 

—

A few movie nights later, JJ is taking about half a year to choose a film, and Penelope holds court in the meantime. “Hotch is the dad,” she declares, using her best Elle-Woods-does-debate-club voice. “Hotch is undeniably the dad.”

“Agreed,” Alex says, and Penelope spins round to face her.

“Mom-friend,” she says decisively, turns to Dave: “Rich uncle who isn’t actually related to anyone but may as well be.”

James raises his hand, a little sheepish. “If Alex is the mom-friend and Hotch is the dad, what does that make me?”

“The side piece,” Dave says, and gets pelted with cushions for his trouble.

“Older brother, sister, middle child, baby of the family,” Penelope continues, pointing at Derek, JJ, herself, and Spencer in turn before coming to Emily and hesitating. “Uh—"

“Gay cousin,” Emily says before the phrase has even fully formed in her mind. “I’ll be the cool lesbian one who picks the movie if nobody else does— seriously, JJ, make up your mind already before she gets stuck into the extended family, or I’ll choose and you can have until my next turn to decide.”

JJ groans and turns back to the laptop, Penelope hurrying over to help her while the rest of the room settles back into a gentle rhythm. Derek dives for the snack bag and starts distributing; Alex tries to shift Spencer into a more comfortable position without waking him while James wrestles cushions out of Dave’s petty grip from the other end of the couch; Emily curls into her armchair and watches Hotch watch them all. There’s a small, contented smile on his face— she lets the words run through her again, bright and smooth and true as sunlight, and agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Cheers for reading, and once again, do yourself a favour and check out ['Patron Saint of Lost Causes'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24442195/chapters/58977433) on here and the [ assorted drabbles/meta on tumblr](https://themetaphorgirl.tumblr.com/boardingschoolbabes) if you haven't already!


End file.
